ours were simple 18k white gold bands, so after my ex left, i wore it on another finger simply because i like wearing rings. a couple years later i started feeling a little weird about keeping it, so i sold it for $100 (which was pretty good, considering it only cost $150 to begin with.) i think that's the only time a pawn shop actually gave me MORE money than i expected!

i never regretted getting rid of it for any emotional reason, although in hindsight i probably would've just kept it and had the inscription polished out of the inside. then again, i have more rings than i ever wear, so i guess it's not a big deal...it'd probably be sunk deep into the depths of my jewelry box by now.

ick, i worked at Guitar Center many years ago too! i'm sure i've got a few customer stories, and i'll have to think back on that. but the most frustrating part of working there was the company itself! they always figured out a way to screw me or my department out of bonuses, even when i sold $20,000 worth of gear in one day...i never saw a single cent from that!

second, you CAN get wasabi in the US...but it tends to be pretty expensive (and it's true that most "wasabi" sold in stores is basically just horseradish dyed green.) i've had real wasabi a couple times, and as much as i like the "dry spicy heat" that horseradish provides, REAL wasabi is pretty brutal. i mean, it tastes good and is a good accompaniment for sushi/sashimi, but it's REALLY strong!

if horseradish clears your sinuses, real wasabi will make you feel like your entire head has been hollowed out!

'Mad Max' is one of my absolute favorite movies of all time! the sequels (especially 'Road Warrior') were really good too, but the low-budget original is by far the best! i actually think the low-budget look of the film enhanced its post-apocalyptic setting and my biggest complaint about the sequels is that they looked too "Hollywood-slick" (although i'll admit that 'The Road Warrior' probably had the best costumes out of the three.)

here's a fun fact that the original article failed to mention: when the film was released in the US, the distributors were afraid Americans would have a hard time with the Australian accents, so they had voice actors overdub the whole film. the resulting overdubs made the film seem completely ridiculous and the really do change the whole tone of the movie into something far less dark than what it really is. i believe all of the DVD releases have the original dialog track restored as the default, but (at least on my copy) you can go into the audio options and select the "American Overdub" version that was present on the film's original US release. it's pretty hilarious just how bad the overdubbing is, and it's worth watching at least once with it turned on.

ultimately 'Mad Max' is a pretty basic revenge story, but it was done in such a way that, at least for its time, it was pretty unique and i think it still holds up really well against modern dystopian movies. the whole series does, really. The Toecutter is one of the most under-rated movie villains of all time, and one of my favorites. Hugh Keays-Byrne was probably the most seasoned out of all the actors in the film, and it really shows: the Toecutter is one of those brilliant villains who's both supremely intelligent and also just little completely psycho!

companies often come up with clever marketing names for spin-off products. this is clearly not one of them, and is destined to be mentioned in a Neatorama "Terrible Brand Names that Almost Existed" feature 25 years down the line.

"Mondelez" doesn't sound remotely food-like. to me, it sounds like the name of a second-rate, off-Strip Vegas hotel.

mrph, i thought this was a BS study the first time i heard about it a week or two back. the controls were terrible and they gathered so much data from so many dissimilar people that it's virtually worthless. it's kinda like that old saying, "if you hunt for a witch hard enough, eventually you'll find one", meaning that the data could be interpreted to mean whatever the "researchers" want it to mean, even if it's not scientifically sound or accurate. geez, even my 8th grade science class had better controls set up than this "study"!

while not scientific, here's a personal anecdote: my great-grandmother ate beef at least three times a week, along with pork and chicken. she also allowed herself one beer almost every day. all of that was purchased from a regular grocery store. yet, she lived to be nearly 94 years old!

my point is that, while i certainly agree that eating naturally-produced food whenever possible is the preferable option, people need to take most food studies like this with a massive, enormous grain of salt.

FYI, the ASPCA has a list of human foods that can be dangerous for dogs and cats to eat. it's on their website.

when i was young, we had a cat that LOVED peas (and popcorn)! my mom always bought those generic canned peas (the ones that aren't so much green as they are...grey-brown?) while i like peas, i think canned ones are horrible, and so i'd find any excuse i could not to eat them. well, when i discovered that our cat actually liked them, i usually would eat just slowly enough so that my mom finished first. then, when she got up to put her plate in the sink and start doing dishes, i'd quickly scoop my little pile of peas onto the floor, which our cat would promptly scarf down!

that cat also loved popcorn, so after we'd made some (on the stove: this was right before the microwavable stuff got popular), we'd set aside a little pile for the cat that we wouldn't put salt or butter on. we'd spend movie night randomly tossing popcorn pieces to the cat whenever there was a boring part in the movie.

i always thought it was adorable when cats ate people food. they're finicky as hell with their OWN food, but they'll end up enjoying the strangest "people food"!

Arnie kinda beat me to it (the Zappa thing), but to expand a little bit: Frank Zappa is probably most well-known as an incredibly inventive and technical guitarist, at least among musicians. he was writing "prog rock" stuff before that genre was really a "thing", and Dweezil Zappa has been doing his "Zappa Plays Zappa" project for a few years now. Dweezil said he had to study and practice his dad's music for two years before he even put his touring band together, because it's so complicated!

Frank also wrote a lot of, um, "unique" lyrics, which he's also well-known for. while i'd consider Frank a good singer, that was probably most done out of necessity, to get his lyrics across.

so yeah, Frank was a composer, first and foremost; it was probably just a useful convenience that he could sing well, although his voice wasn't particularly unique (meaning that i doubt many people could identify Frank by his voice alone, especially compared to singers who have extremely identifiable voices, like Geddy Lee or Johnny Cash or Elvis.)

two more quick Frank Zappa fun facts: he actually appeared in the beginning of an episode of The Monkee's tv show (as himself), although his intro didn't really have anything to do with the episode at all. and despite popular belief, Frank actually didn't do ANY drugs at all!

i actually saw "HEAD" on late-night tv not too long ago, on a digital sub-channel. it was...bizarre! i only missed the first 10 minutes or so, but i had absolutely NO idea WHAT was going on! it was the most nonsensical thing i've ever seen, bar none...yet strangely, i kinda want to watch it again!

as a musician, i'm highly impressed!!! a lot of multi-instrumentalists usually suffer in one or two disciplines (for example: i can play guitar and bass very well, but my piano abilities are fairly rudimentary, and my drumming, well...i can usually keep time, but that's about it.) but this guy nails ALL of it, and he's got a pretty good voice to boot!

i'm a big fan of Queen and Freddie Mercury, and this guy does them proud! i'd love to see/hear him do "Bicycle Race"! and i'm not sure if anyone else noticed, but as a bonus, he even plays a Brian May signature series guitar!

@Tod Westlake wasn't it Orsen Welles who said, on his deathbed, something to the effect of, "Don't let that man touch my film!"? he was referring to Ted Turner wanting to colorize Citizen Kane.

anyway, i'm not militant about it, but overall don't really see the point in colorizing film. it seems to destroy a lot of the artistry in it, especially because production crews had to go to great lengths to balance contrast (ie, if you saw a color photo of many of the actors, they'd often have on tons of strangely-colored makeup to make the contrast look correct in black and white.)

i don't have a problem with "cleaning up" black and white films (like correcting balance, saturation, that sort of thing), or fixing audio which seems to lose a LOT of high end as it ages. but i think of that more as maintenance and preservation, rather than fundamentally changing the whole film, like colorization does. celluloid film does not age well, especially if it's just tossed in the corner of a warehouse somewhere. i'm all for cleaning up and digitizing classic films, but i still don't understand the point behind colorizing them, since it doesn't seem to benefit anyone in any way.

i find it interesting that this "study" doesn't quantify how much alcohol has actually been consumed. they state "five drinks", but they never say exactly how much alcohol each drink contains. is it a pint? is it a shot? and what constitutes those measures?? the only way this could every be considered a scientific test is if they spelled out EXACTLY how much alcohol makes up a "drink"...but they don't. and they also don't specify what a "short amount of time" is.

in science circles, none of this would hold up, because there are NO definitive measurements given, either for the amount of alcohol consumed or the time period in which it should be consumed to be considered "excessive".

here's a good example: i can drink 10-12 beers on Friday and Saturday nights. but those beers are usually from my grocery store, which only sells 3.2% beer. now, the law (here) says that the beer sold by grocery stores can only be "3.2% ABV Maximum", and that doesn't mean that's what i've been drinking is actually that strong (or weak, depending on how you look at it.) so i could very well be drinking something that is 1 or 2% alcohol. oh, and it generally takes me a good 12 hours to finish off a "grocery store" 12-pack...so is THAT binge drinking, or just a slow burn?

i regularly go several days without drinking any alcohol...but does my weekend nights constitute "binge drinking"?? how much alcohol do i consume, and is it a reliably repeatable experiment? and how long do i have to continually consume "x" amount of booze to start having physical problems?

my point is that "studies" like this are useless without concrete, minute data. the amount of liquid in a "drink" is useless: it's the amount of alcohol that's important, and how often (and for how long) it's consumed to be of any importance.

at the risk of being pedantic, "bullet shells" isn't really a thing. ammunition has two main parts: the bullet itself, and the casing (aka "cartridge casing", and colloquially known as "brass" or "shell"), which holds the bullet, primer and powder. a complete unit of ammunition is properly called a "cartridge".

i hate to sound nitpicky, but this subject is one of my pet peeves. but i figure it's Neatorama and we're all here to learn stuff!

as for the portraits themselves, i think they're pretty cool and make a strong statement!

as a trans person, i'd like to say "thank you"! being trans is completely irrelevant to what this person did to other people. it was all about greed and making a quick buck, with total disregard for the health, safety and well-being of any of her "clients".

while i certainly don't think Neatorama or the linked website intended to offend anyone (i personally wasn't offended, although i was highly annoyed), there wasn't any reason to point out that the offender is transgender. a criminal's gender identity rarely has anything to do with their crime, and rarely even requires mentioning. it just seems like a way to fill up space in the article with extra words (at the least), or a way to get extra page hits on a "juicy story" (at the worst, although i'd like to think Neatorama wouldn't stoop to that level.)

(and to Neatorama: it's "transgender", not "transgendered". "transgendered" isn't really a word and doesn't follow the preferred journalistic spelling or grammar suggested by the AP Style Book. just FYI.)

about the only thing i can think of is: are you freakin' kidding me?! i mean, sure, kids can get hurt in PE or any type of sport. there's no such thing as a risk-free sport, period. but how many millions of kids have survived North American public schools just fine for well over a hundred years?? it's completely ridiculous!

it's completely ridiculous to be arrested or detained for taking a photo like that. there are plenty of great industrial buildings that make great photo subjects, and just because one person doesn't see artistic value in it doesn't mean other people don't. i've had two friends hassled for this exact same thing (one was taking photos of an oil refinery, one was taking photos of old smokestacks at a power plant). neither was arrested or even ticketed, but they were given a strong talking-to by the police and forced to leave (despite the fact that neither had been trespassing on private property).

i suppose i understand the need for security around certain places, but like another poster said, it only takes about a minute to find photos of these places on Google Earth. not only that, but i would imagine someone that REALLY wanted to take photos for a nefarious purpose wouldn't be out doing it in broad daylight with a tripod and a bag full of various camera equipment and lenses. somehow i doubt a terrorist would bother using a light meter....or a $5000 camera.

wow, somebody's getting fired! i actually had to spend 10 days on in-home detention and had to wear a monitor a couple years back (not something i'm particularly proud of, but we all make mistakes). anyway, when they fitted my ankle monitor, they made me pull down my socks and checked both legs (i'm assuming for this EXACT reason!) they let me pull my socks up before they put the monitor on, but they were pretty thorough checking my ankles and feet (i had to take my shoes off too). not only that, but when i had to come in for a data upload, they'd also check the monitor to make sure it was securely in place and hadn't been tampered with.

this monitoring company failed pretty miserably. it's one thing for one employee to make a mistake and miss something, but for all of that stuff to go unnoticed is pretty remarkable.